Unit 3 Reflection

This Unit was about the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart disease. The circulatory system transports materials needed by the cells and removes waste materials from the cells. The respiratory system works with the circulatory system to exchange gas. The cardiovascular system works by the pulmonary circuit (O2 deprived) and the systemic circuit (O2 rich). Blood first enters the right atrium from the inferior and superior vena cava. It then passes through the tricuspid valve and enters the right ventricle. It passes through the pulmonary semilunar valve to the pulmonary trunk to the pulmonary arteries and out to the lungs. Lungs then exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. In the systemic circuit, pulmonary vein returns blood to heart via the left atrium. It passes through the bicuspid (mitral) valve and enters left ventricle. Lastly, passes through aortic semilunar valve into aorta and out to body. Veins carry blood to the heart from the tissues while arteries carry

blood away from the heart to the tissue. 

Cardiovascular health refers to the health of the heart and blood vessels. Lack of exercise, being overweight, smoking, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, high blood pressure (caused by atherosclerosis), and high cholesterol all cause cardiovascular disease. To promote cardiovascular health, people should control their blood pressure. 40-90% of all stroke victims had high blood pressure before their stroke. To maintain healthy blood vessels, people should exercise, maintain a healthy weight and diet, control blood pressure and cholesterol, prevent atherosclerosis, prevent diabetes, don’t smoke, and minimize stress. I want to learn more about Lung Cancer, Chronic Bronchitis, Asthma, Cystic Fibrosis, Sinusitis, Tuberculosis, Pleurisy, Influenza, etc. because those chronic pulmonary diseases seem very interesting to me. My aunt had lung cancer so I would love to learn more about it and how it can affect someone’s life. I wonder if there has been any medications to prevent strokes kind of like a vaccine.

My weaknesses in this unit were learning the diagram of the heart. I had a lot of trouble understanding the different parts of the heart even though I understood the functions of all the major valves and blood vessels. I enjoyed the heart dissection even though it was very difficult to locate all the parts of the heart. Working in a group helped me with this challenge. This unit was very interesting to me because some of my family members have had heart attacks (they never recovered fully after) so I finally understand what could have caused the disease. I also had trouble studying for this test because I tried many methods to try to understand all the material. I studied with Nimisha the day before to make sure we both understand the topics. I am still having trouble studying because even though I put a lot of effort into my studying, it doesn’t seem to help because I still don’t do good on the tests. My strengths in this unit was being able to identify the functions of the different blood vessels and the different diseases (causes and effects). 

My health goals (from Unit 2 Reflection) were to eat more fruits and to sleep more. I have been eating more fruits; however, my amount of sleep has remained the same because of tennis and work from school. It is hard to balance out both my tennis practice and homework. For the remainder of the semester, I hope to spend more time understanding the pictures because they are very helpful in understanding the unit.

Pictures:

For the video above, we made one mistake toward the end of the video. After the left ventricle, we said it goes through bicuspid vale but it actually goes through the aortic semilunar valve into aorta and out to the body.
Picture one is a picture of the heart we drew on the street. Picture two is a picture of the heart during dissection. Picture three is a selfie we took with the heart at the beginning.